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Misinterpretation In Spreading The News By Lady Gregory

798 Words4 Pages

‘Spreading The News’, by Lady Gregory, is a one-act comic play of rumour and misinterpretation. The play is set in a small town in rural Ireland where gossip is prevalent. The story revolves around Bartley Fallon who has a pessimistic outlook on life, Jack Smith who is a jolly person, the gossiping townspeople and a new magistrate who comes to the town, anticipating the worst and suspicious of everything. Bartley merely wants to return Jack his hayfork but as a result of Mrs Tarpey’s hearing impairment and the townspeople’s love and passion for gossip, there is a misinterpretation of the situation. The townspeople soon believe Bartley is out to murder Jack. One misunderstanding leads to another, resulting in the arrest of Bartley and Jack by the magistrate. The play is comical and dramatic as it exploits both English and Irish stereotypes. Lady Gregory, a member of the Protestant upper classes of Ireland, possessed political and economic power in Ireland. In this play, she carefully showed the lifestyle of the lower-class workers in her region in an attempt to depict their culture precisely. This essay explores the consequences of gossip in the play. Most of the characters are stock characters, stereotypical people who are recognisable from repeated recurrences in a specific written tradition. They are just there to develop the plot. The characteristics of the Magistrate reflect and contribute to the consequences of gossip. He is pompous and likes to jump to

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